Firefox 3.5 Now World's Most Popular Browser

Now here's a sweet, sweet headline that sadly isn't likely to stick around long: Firefox 3.5 is the most popular web browser in the world. At least for the next few weeks...
This news is broken to us by the number crunchers at StatCounter which show Mozilla's browser has overtaken fast falling Internet Explorer 7. This is something of a false position, however, since it simply represents the drop-off of IE7 while IE8 catches up. That said, growth in IE8 has dropped off recently and perhaps the Windows browser ballot screen will scupper it further.

As for everyone else, the most notable mover is Google Chrome - an unsurprising development given the recent launch of third party extensions and a number of updates and speed boosts. In fact recent growth in Chrome has easily outpaced the relatively static market shares of its rivals (below), which is ominous given creator Google's development resources. Indeed, I'm a (very contented) recent Chrome convert after five years with Firefox (it's sooo fast!).
For those who like to check such matters, StatCounter tracks codes on three million websites (totalling five billion page views) to bring us this data. Expect it to report IE8 back on top in the near future, but like Firefox's headline today, that victory looks an increasingly shallow one.